HUMILIATION AND GREEK DEBT (original) (raw)
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The economic crisis signifies a turning point for Greek national self-image. The present paper explores the ideological function of interpretative repertoires in relation to the reproduction and contestation of national identity. We focus on two basic repertoires: a victimizing and a self-blaming one. Even though connotations of victimhood are not homogenous, its association with an external enemy is very popular. This paper demonstrates that discourses of victimization are not unambiguous and solidified; they interact with self-blaming discursive patterns, thus leading to hybrid perceptions of the national self-image that are adjusted to particular political actors’ strategies.
Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit: On the Greek Crisis
Most ethnographic studies of Greece published during the last few years pay attention to issues like new forms of poverty, resistance structures, solidarity economy initiatives, the rise of the Left, the social and political consequences of the crisis for women, children and migrants, and the cultural perceptions of self in times of crisis. A number of ongoing research projects also examine Greeks' migration overseas and the influx of refugees to the Greek islands since spring 2015. These studies share an interest in groups that are suffering the most from socioeconomic transformations in Greece since 2010, an interest that is consistent with the anthropology of Greece over the past three decades. The sociocentrism that developed among social scientists in post-1974 Greece (see Papataxiarchis 2013) influenced both the epistemological and the political standpoint of Greek social anthropologists. Meanwhile, most of the non-Greek social anthropologists who conducted fieldwork in Greece during this period have been influenced by a desire to advocate for the less privileged categories of Greece's population: women, minorities, migrants, and so on.
The Greek economic crisis resonates across Europe as synonymous with corruption, poor government, austerity, financial bailouts, civil unrest, and social turmoil. The search for accountability on the local level is entangled with competing rhetorics of persuasion, fear, and complex historical consciousness. Internationally, the Greek crisis is employed as a trope to call for collective mobilization and political change. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Trikala, central Greece, this article outlines how accountability for the Greek economic crisis is understood in local and international arenas. Trikala can be considered a microcosm for the study of the pan-European economic turmoil as the "Greek crisis" is heralded as a warning on national stages throughout the continent.
(Paper presented at the 1st Global Conference on 'Reframing Punishment: Opportunities and Problems', 3-5 September 2012, Mansfield College, Oxford. As it is here it is published online at the conference archives: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/kanaoutipunpaper.pdf. Significantly enriched (9000 words), it is published as a chapter in the book Reframing Punishment: Silencing, Dehumanisation and The Way Forward, edited by Selina E.M. Doran and Laura Bouttell, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, 2014: pp. 147-167). This essay attempts to describe the ways in which the so-called Greek crisis and the new loans received by Greece are experienced by the Greek people as punishment rather than rescue, rekindling an existing pariah mentality. Through media representations of the Greeks, the lenders, and generally of Greece in crisis, it uses Hannah Arendt’s analyses of crises in Western democracies, as well as her analyses of the role of the political pariah, the mob and the nation. Secondly, the essay examines the ways in which the punishment in question and the trauma it carries are reversed – namely, how from the initial self-punishment, when the Greeks accepted that there were things to be corrected in their lifestyle, society has reached a point where it is now believed that the politicians (and, less often, some journalists) are the ones that need to be punished, by the people this time. It addresses the reasons why this intention to punish and its expressions may indeed get out of hand, since some expressions of this are violent, and make these expressions of punishment fall prey in the hands of fascist groups like the newly elected in parliament party called ‘Golden Dawn’. Lastly, it directs attention to the ways in which this punishment can be tamed, directing it towards a future of positive political change, and the factors that make this possible.
De te fabula narratur? Ethnography of and during the Greek crisis
This paper is the intruduction to an edited volume on the Greek crisis. The volume brings together new anthropological research on the recent crisis in Greece and provides valuable ethnographic explorations of a period of radical social change. With contributions from scholars based both in Greece and abroad, the book addresses a number of key issues such as the refugee crisis, far-right extremism, new forms of resistance to crisis, and the psychological impact of increased poverty and unemployment. It provides much needed ethnographic contributions and critical anthropological perspectives at a key moment in Greece's history, and will be of great interest to readers interested in the social, political, and economic developments in Europe. It is the first collection to ethnographically explore this period of radical social change and its impact on anthropological understanding of Greece, and Europe overall.
Introduction in Revolt and Crisis in Greece
Revolt and Crisis in Greece
You are a child growing up in Greece in the nineties. There is a high likelihood that one of your distant relatives, or even your aunt, your uncle, your grandfather, or your mother or father may be haunted by the memory of a few years in their life from whence no bedtime stories will ever arise. “Exile,” “dictatorship,” “civil war”: these strange words ring about, yet remain lost behind the veil of the untold. Silent grandparents with lingering gazes, voters-for-life of a party that would repeatedly betray them over the course of a lifetime too far along to change its course. These were times past, hidden by the thick screen onto which the capitalist spectacle projected itself. By the mid-2000s, the spectacle had grown to Olympic proportions. The Games were here: development fever, a certain euphoria mixed with longing, the longing to become “Western,” to finally “make it.” For a brief moment in time it actually seemed to happen for some.
Vienna Working Papers in Ethnography, 2018
This working paper discusses pro-Troika social critiques in everyday life in Greece. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (2014-2017) conducted in the town of Volos, on the eastern shore of mainland Greece, this paper traces largely unanalysed forms of widespread critique. As literature has more extensively covered opposition and resistance to the restructuring of the Greek state and economy under the austerity regime, this focus allows for a nuanced analysis of social reactions to current processes of neoliberal restructuring. I argue that the perspective adopted must not only take into account power relations and overlapping moral frameworks but also refrain from strategic essentialisations of power and resistance. My analytical focus in this paper is on ‘ambivalence’, as a way to understand the complexity of moral orders and to capture the contradictions and dilemmas my interlocutors routinely accommodate, as they navigate economic hardship. This perspective on social critique and ambivalence is important in two ways – 1) theoretically – as it refuses power binaries and instead refocuses on hegemony and ambivalence in the analysis of moral orders in capitalism; 2) ethnographically – to complement and contrast the current emphasis on resistance and solidarity in the anthropological literature on the Greek crisis.